Logistics plays a key place in keeping our health facilities running

A career in retail management and procurement has led Senior Supply Coordinator Chris Frew to develop a seamless supply hub across the numerous community and oral health facilities in Metro North and Moreton Bay.

Chris, who has been in Queensland Health for a decade, was also involved in the SEQ Sortation and Distribution Centre at Richlands, and supply roles at key Metro North Health facilities such as TPCH and RBWH, and now Community and Oral Health (COH).

“COH didn’t have a supply hub four years ago or even the ability to run supply reports around medical consumables to identify risks to patient care,” Chris said.

“It has been important to correct supply and procurement services and deliver the best possible practice in this area, while also supporting the response to COVID-19 a few years ago.

“We have also managed to take on all of the Metro North Oral Health Service facilities including adult and children’s oral health clinics and school dental vans one year ago.”

Chris is part of a small team located at the Brighton Health Campus providing exceptional inventory management of clinical consumables such as gloves, needles, gauze, masks and oral health consumables needed as part of care.

“We also provide guidance to hundreds of COH staff on how to place orders and invoice management,” he said.

The COH supply team delivers hundreds of kilograms of consumable supplies each week to service lines and oral health clinics located in areas like Brighton, Zillmere, Caboolture, Red Hill, Chermside, Strathpine, Sandgate and Kippa Ring.

“It is a dynamic workload with so many unique issues, but I enjoy the technical challenges of monitoring a service and finding efficiencies, cost savings and reducing risks to our patients,” Chris said.

“It is important to deliver a high-quality service to our healthcare service, which in turn improves the delivery of care to our patients and residents. There is clear value to what our team is doing.”

Chris said procurement and logistics are a lot more difficult in the health sector as challenges with supply availability always come up and are often more difficult due to the distribution of all of our facilities.

Each year, COH connects tens of thousands of people to community-based health care needed following their hospital stay at around 30 sites across North Brisbane and Moreton Bay.

COH provides more than 250,000 patient appointments or visits each year in the home, oral health clinics, health facilities, mobile dental vans and bedded services, as well as residential aged and disability care facilities.